Understanding a Single Version Product

Whether Henry Ford actually said, “You can paint it any color, so long as it’s black,” it underscores Ford’s success at building for a mass market. He brought together an acceptable combination of consistent quality, price, and reliability to sell 15,000,000 Model-T automobiles.

It might seem that all we need to do is find our own “Model-T” and get it to the mass market. Some companies are trying to do that. The companies that succeed understand that no product can serve a mass market in the 21st century quite the way products once did.

If you’re marketing a Model-T — a single version product — in this century, here’s how to do it in the 21st Century.

Build a “Model-T” with easy to communicate benefits, such as low price and reliability.

Identify a clearly defined key customer group who value for those key benefits and use them for buying criteria.

Study the products that this group currently buys. Identify the features those products have in common. Look beyond the features to the benefits that each feature offers.

Build relationships with the “Model-T” customer group mavens — folks who offer friends detailed advice on buying products that might compete with your “Model-T.” Get to know customer evangelists for the products that the key group is currently buying.

Ensure your “Model-T” product includes all of the features that key customers value and none they have no use for.

Offer it at a competitive price that requires no negotiation. Negotiate takes time and thinking.

Provide fast delivery and excellent service.

Allow consumers to personalize it. Make product modification easy and friendly. Offer mod kits and merchandise add-ons that lets folks feel part of a “Model-T” club for owning the product.

Take care with new product versions that you don’t revise out the values that developed the customer base that you’re enjoying.

Consider an exclusive brick and mortar presence and a huge online selling model. A consistent product with a simple sales story works well in an online situation. Check whether direct mail is also viable for your “Model-T.”

A single version product that fits its customers perfectly can make a new market happen. The “Model-T” model still has a place in the 21st century.

A Guest Post by
Susan

Promoting your personal blog

With the constant expansion of social networking, there are plenty of ways to promote your personal blog to the right people who have an interest in what you are doing and why you are doing it.

Online pinboard tools

Whether your blog is about parenting, business skills or DIY, online pinboards can be an excellent way of attracting followers that have similar interests to yourself. This type of publicity is free and worldwide. Sites such as pinterest.com allow you to create an online pinboard and post pictures to it from your blog using a simple application added to your tool bar. You can have as many online pinboards as you wish (within reason) each with different subjects or themes. The site will then allow you to follow the pinboards of other users that have similar interests to yourself and in turn to follow the things that you post. Your followers can then re-pin your images to their own boards creating a whole large network. Your images will be available to your followers’ followers and so on.

Include relevant links in your blog

Including relevant links to other products and businesses within your blog can help create a network of interest and create new followers. For instance, when writing about an arm chair, use a hyperlink to create links to other relevant businesses and pages. This is a good an easy way to create an interesting and informative blog.

Facebook

There are many different ways in using Facebook as an excellent tool to promote your personal blog. Facebook groups are there to join together users that have similar interests and want to join discussions on matters that are related to you. It is always beneficial to join groups that can help you forward your ideas and create a good buzz about your blog.

Following other users, pages and businesses on Facebook will often give you the opportunity to promote your blog. For instance if you keep a personal blog regarding crafting, you may want to consider following businesses and even magazine publications that are about the same or similar subject matters. You will often find that like-minded people will be following the same pages as you and will pass on links to your blog.

Finally never underestimate the power of sharing your personal blog with family and friends. These loyal followers will often share your links creating a web of interest stretching out across hundreds of people and businesses.

Twitter

Twitter is an excellent way of promoting your personal blog in an unobtrusive way. Expand the list of other users that you follow to again include people and businesses that have similar interests to yourself. You will find by doing this that Twitter will begin to recommend your tweets to a wider range of users on the site.

Joining blogging sites

By joining a blogging network you will make your blog available to thousands of other users. You can use an RSS feed to automatically update your page on the blogging network so that when you create a new post or make a new tweet. This will work in your favour if you are a frequent blogger.

A good blogging site will also give you access to hundreds of blogs that are on a similar subject to your own. By following those, not only will you be able to find new and interesting ideas to help you along the way, but also attract followers from these blogs in your own right.

Effective use of search words

Most internet users will search for certain words and phrases if they want to find out information. If you are writing about a certain subject matter, make sure that you mention the subject frequently within your blog, this way it will be picked up by the search engines and your blog will increase in popularity.

StumbleUpon

Stumbleupon.com is a very good website searching tool where users can recommend sites that they have found to other like-minded people. When you register an account users can set their preferences to help them find blogs on the subject matters that they are interested in. Whenever you create a new blog post, by adding it to the Stumble Upon register you will make it available to thousands of people who are looking to read articles and information on the things that you are writing about. They will also be able to ‘like’ your blog in turn passing the link on to other users and increasing your bloon behalf of her favorite catnapper recliner specialist.

The Wrong Kind of Attention

As I checked my bulk email, a subject line stood out to me. It read …

Only For Our Best Customers > Charisma Now On Sale!

I thought. there’s an “almost clever” idea meant to get me to look inside.
Charisma is the name of a bedding product line the company sells. I’ve bought it in the past and I am a fan. So the email ad should have made positive points … right?

It had the opposite effect. Here’s why.

Dear Big Company: Why Your Best Customer Offer Doesn’t Cut It

From the moment I read the subject line, my mind was brought to the offer not to the product. I was thinking What makes me a best customer and what’s so special about this best customer offer? That’s a doubly dangerous line to walk. After all, something ONLY for best customers really should be something exclusive and highly rewarding.

A “Best Customer Offer” Needs to Be Exclusive If they call me a best customer, I need to know what got me there. Am I truly a member of that exclusive best customer club or do they “say that to every girl’? I was doubtful about my “best customer-ness.” I haven’t bought from this big company for over two years.

I found my doubt confirmed by the words under the ad.
This offer “only for our best customers also said …

If you received this email from a friend and would like to subscribe to our email list, click here.

and something like …

You received this email because you have subscribed to promotional emails from [The Big Company]

So everyone on their list and anyone they pass the email onto is a best customer?

A Best Customer Offer Should Be Best Customer Rewarding If you call attention to my best customer-ness, I would think you’re trying to encourage best customer kind of behavior. So the next “best” requirement would be a Best Customer offer that seduce me into being a Best Customer — an unforgettable sale of such value that I not only stocked up for my own home, but also encouraged my friends to do it too. Unfortunately, the sale prices I discovered matched every other sale The Big Company has sent me.

Dear Big Company:

Your “Best Customer” offer backfired on me.

If you want me to read your ad and buy your product, don’t lie to me. It shows no respect for either one of us and takes the focus off the value of your product. In fact, it gets me wondering about things like these:

Is a best customer anyone with an email address on your list? Would you include the guy on the corner flashing open a trench coat saying “Hey look at this!”

Is your company in trouble that you have to resort to this? Are you like the guy who’ll say anything to get a date and doesn’t care who it’s with?

Did you think about who would read this email? Or were you so busy trying to sell me that you forgot that I might actually want to trust what you’re saying?

“If you’re going to lie to me, at least have the decency to be convincing.” If this is your best truth, you need a better plan to get “best customers” to fall in love with you again. Because saying the equivalent to …

You’re my best girlfriend and I offer you the same thing I give every girl even the ones I don’t know yet.

just doesn’t cut it.

If I’m a best customer, I want to feel like you care about me. A better subject line might read …

A Guest Post by
Diana Pohly

If youâve been getting new customers by running online ads, hereâs some good news for you. New research from Google (http://www.youtube.com/v/Xpay_ckRpIU?hl=en&fs=1) has shown that the online ads you place on websites really do work. In fact, they work better than most people imagined. You can see it in this YouTube video.

For its test, Google saturated specific test market areas with online ads for specific company products, then measured consumers buying in those regions against buying elsewhere. And the ads worked. Here are some highlights:

Online ads attract customers and sell more. In the Google study, a national retailer ran online ads in 59 target markets for products in one product category and saw a 2 percent increase in sales in that category, compared to sales in other markets where no ads were run.

Online ads create a âhalo effect.â Companies that ran online ads achieved an across-the-board increase in spending for a range of products, not only for the products that they advertised online.

Online coupons deliver results too. Coupons improved sales 2.5% for the products they promoted and thanks to that âhalo effect,â resulted in a 1.6% increase for all product sales.

Online advertising offers a significant return on investment. Companies that participated in the test earned as much as a $10.00 return for every dollar they spent advertising online.

Offer something that is attractive, desirable, and free in exchange for contact information. For example, let visitors enter their email addresses to get a discount coupon for one of your products, a free sample, a chance to win an iPad, a free yoga lesson in your studio, or a complimentary technology training session from one of your consultants. Be generous! Remember, you may never have a chance to win that customer again.

So letâs say that you are running those online ads and people are visiting your website to either buy or investigate.
How will you make the most of the fact that they are there?

Lead with Relationships

Again this week, I got an email from someone who doesn’t know me, who wanted to engage my network in her cause. This post is about that one email exchange that exemplified too many don’ts in my inbox.

I’m a person, not a network. And my network is made up friends and colleagues I respect. I value them. I treasure them. I trust them. I know I can’t replace them. I don’t give, share, or sell their attention to people I don’t know. So please …

1. Don’t Ask for Things Before We Know Each Other

Any person who takes the shortest while to follow me online knows that I’m a giver and I love to support my friends. Any person who takes a second longer also knows that

I want a relationship not a one-link stand.

What that means is that I want to get to know you before I recommend you or share what you do with my friends.

2. Don’t Ask for My Network

Iâm writing because Iâve identified you as someone who is part of a networking empire that is basically unstoppable, and a major online influencer when it comes to what people are thinking and feeling and doing.

Translation: I want to use your network because my own isn’t big enough to reach my goal.

In itself that’s not a bad strategy to ask a friend to reach out to her network. But the relationship — the friendship and the trust — needs to be there first. This someone saw me as a channel of distribution, not a person. She wasn’t really looking at aligning our goals.

3. Don’t Assume Your Mission Is My Mission

The next five paragraphs were about her, her mission, and why her mission is important to her. Aside from describing their philosophy and stating that I lived it, the mission itself wasn’t very clear. Neither was why I should invest in it.

4. Don’t Lie by Omission

I got curious to find out more about the cause or the product that this mission was all about. It’s a retail and lifestyle brand of apparel. Funny how that never got mentioned in the first or the emails that followed.

5. Don’t Act Like I Work for You

Why have I gotten in touch with you today? Because I believe you embody my mission and can help others do the same.

Tweet the following message ….
Post the following message on Facebook …
Share the following message with your readers …

Again, I might do plenty for a friend, but without that relationship, calling me to action so directly was telling me to open my network to someone I’ve never met.

6. Don’t Ask Me to Cross the FTC

Doesn’t telling me what to tweet or post break the FTC rules?

7. Don’t Offer Me Favors

My lack of response might have signaled that I was busy or that I had a lack of interest. But apparently it did not. Soon I got a follow up repeating a shorter version of the same message above the original.

Did you get it? Do you have any questions for me?
I’m working to develop a huge wave of enthusiasm … hope I can count on your support. And since I know favors go both ways, in return for your support I’d like to offer you a limited edition … t-shirtâ¦
or maybe something else? Networking or entrepreneurial support?

8. Don’t Assume I Have Nothing Better to Do

Let’s talk, and find out more about how we can help each other. Please let me know your thoughts ASAP …

Your urgency isn’t my urgency. I have my own work.

9. Don’t Shout Louder After a “No, Thank You.”

I replied as graciously as I might. My exact reply was …

I got your message. You have a lovely message that you want to share. Your energy is admirable. I can see your passion for what you’re doing. I wish you the best of luck with it.

Unfortunately, my family, my clients, and current projects are all I can keep up with. It wouldn’t be fair to them to take on another project.

Thanks for asking,
Liz

I might have expected that would be the end, but it wasn’t.

The reply read:

Hi Liz,

I understand and thank you for your reply.

The real reason I’m connecting with you is because YOU (as an individual), appear to fit [our] profile and seem like someone who’d want to be a part of something great, in its infancy stages – by doing something little to help spread the word and enthusiasm.

Even if just via your personal Facebook account or something – is there any way you’d be willing to help me out?

There’s a free [deleted description] T-shirt in it if you are… :o)

Best to you with your business endeavors as well…

Two more emails followed in which I was commended for my “due diligence” in having checked out the emailer and set straight in that she had built her huge network from being positive and sincere with people who showed immediate enthusiasm for her cause.

I didn’t know that I had done that.

It was never mentioned that the “cause” was the philosophy behind a retail apparel brand.

Can You Articulate What Makes Success?

Once, at least once in your life, you succeed at something big. You learned to read. You graduated. You built something, won something, proved you could do something well and elegant. You stood up for something believed in. You held a friend’s hand through the night. You were part of a winning team. Your team brought in a project in a way that only your team can.

You know the feeling of succeeding. Everyone does.
But can you articulate what made that success?
Can you repeat it, consistently achieve it, and deliver success with confidence?

Success relies on a four important characteristics to be realized – the right mind, the right heart, the right skills and talents, and the right focus and passion in the right direction. How do we align all of these “rights” in a truly successful combination?

The right mind – The decided outcome was clear. Success was defined in clear concrete terms. You named it and were determined to claim it.

The right heart – The currency was trust not fear. The idea that you or your team wouldn’t succeed wasn’t even on the radar. Getting to the goal was just the plan.

The right skills and talents – The chosen challenge was at the right level. Peak performance comes when the challenge stretches us just enough to keep us from being bored without causing anxiety.You played to your strengths. You took advantage of opportunities.

The right focus in the right direction – Obstacles, distractions, and roadblocks were irrelevant. When we have our entire focus and passion on the prize, those things that might have sabotaged, undercut, or sidetracked was simply another detail to deal with or ignore on the way to success. If we look back, every roadblock and obstacle to a true success seems like a learning experience, an adventure, or a quest that made the hero’s journey more valuable in our eyes.

Let me say that as clearly as I can. I’m willing to bet that …Every time you succeeded, just as many obstacles and roadblocks found their way to your path as every time you tried something and left it unfinished.

Those four essential elements of success are all you need to repeat the success that you’ve enjoyed in the past. Everything else — the people, the resources, the money, the business plan, the whatever you might mention — depends on the four that I just named.

We have to know a few things, believe a few things, and take on our path fearlessly. It’s a matter of commitment of head, heart, talent, and focused passion to achievement. Or as my husband just said, “No victory is won by the side that is only willing to fight until it hurt a little bit.”

Which of the four essential elements do you need most to achieve and deliver consistently repeatable success?

New from Liz Strauss & GeniusShared Press

It can be hard to find focus sometimes. A few months ago, I was talking with a colleague who was having a hard time finding focus in their work. They spoke of feeling pulled in multiple directions and of many obligations — both at work and with their family. As I listened, I could hear […]

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend. We were sharing stories from days gone by about each of our lives. We hopped from one story to the next — based on what each of us were sharing. It was really an incredible discussion as we were each learning from the other […]

Everyone feels lost sometimes. I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t been lost in their head at one time or another — even those folks overachieving all over the Internet. We all find those moments that we wonder about who we are and what we want. But the question is not whether everyone gets […]

I felt the more embarrassing fear of people’s judgment. When I decided it was time to write again, I avoided the computer for the longest time. On the rare occasion that I managed to sit myself down to write, I’d get caught up answering email or reading articles around the web, not doing writing I […]